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Dept for Education and Skills

Answer

Mr. Ben Chapman: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what per capita spending on education was in Wirral, South in (a) 1997, (b) 2001 and (c) the last year for which figures are available. [222679] Mr. Stephen Twigg: The information requested is collected at local education authority level. Wirral, South is part of both Wirral and Cheshire LEAs and the following table contains the information requested: Education expenditure1, 2 per capita3 in Wirral and Cheshire LEAs4 _________________________________________________________________________________________________. £ per capita Wirral Cheshire 1997-985 1,940 1,940 2001-02 2,680 2,440 2002-03 3,110 2,800 _________________________________________________________________________________________________. 1 The total expenditure on education in schools and LEAs is drawn from the net current expenditure column of the total education spending line. This includes expenditure on schools, education out of schools, continuing education, youth and community and also central LEA management and support. However excluded from the total expenditure is any capital expenditure from revenue (CERA). HE expenditure is not allocated on an LEA basis and instead is largely funded by Government with the money allocated annually, to individual universities through the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). Similarly, the Department does not collect information on the level of funding per student in FE at a local or regional level and therefore we are unable to identify the per capita cost in respect of HE and FE provision for Wirral and Cheshire LEAs and as such it has been excluded. 2 The expenditure data for 1997-98 are drawn from the annual `RO1' spending returns which local authorities submitted to the ODPM. Figures for 2001-02 and 2003-04 are drawn from Section 52 outturn statements which LEAs submitted to the DfES. 3 In order to provide a per capita figure for expenditure on education we have divided each LEA's net current education expenditure figure by the total population aged between three and 19 (inclusive) within that authority. The population figures are estimated resident mid year population figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and these have recently been revised following the 2001 Census. Thus for financial year 1997-98 we have used the population estimate from mid year 1997 and for 2001-02 we used the mid 2001 estimate (and so on). 4 Local government reorganisation (LGR) took place on 1 April 1998 where pre-LGR Cheshire LEA was split into Cheshire LEA, Halton LEA and Warrington LEA. As a result, 1997-98 data is for pre-LGR Cheshire LEA and data for subsequent years is for the part of pre-LGR Cheshire now known as Cheshire LEA and is not therefore comparable with the 1997-98 figure. This break in the time series is shown by the blank row. 5 Figures are rounded to the nearest 10 as reported by the LEA.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

432 c1005-6W; 222679

Session

2004-05

Subjects

Finance Education Pupils Per capita costs Wirral

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk